Natura 2000: EU Reserves Are Facing Development Pressures
An astonishing 18 percent of the European Union’s land area is protected under a network of preserves known as Natura 2000. Now, at the urging of business interests and farmers, the EU is examining whether regulations on development in these areas should be loosened.
Berlin’s world-famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, is only 9 miles away. But in the Tegeler Fliess area, a protected nature reserve on the northern outskirts of Germany’s capital, visitors seem far removed from the city’s bustle. River otters, rare throughout Germany, are active along the creek that runs through the wetlands. Eurasian cranes circle overhead, searching for food in its extensive meadows and wetlands. On summer nights, the monotonous song of the corncrake, a species of rail in decline in Germany, can be heard.
“The Tegeler Fliess is a biological treasure trove,” says Anja Sorges, managing director of the Berlin branch of the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union, Germany’s largest nature conservation organization, known as NABU. Sorges attributes the high diversity of the 1,144-acre reserve to its legally protected status as part of the European Union’s Natura 2000network, the world’s largest system of nature reserves. “There is so much pressure from the city to use areas like this for building or infrastructure,” says Sorges.
But how strong this protection will remain in coming years is unclear. Tegeler Fliess and all the areas that form the EU’s Natura 2000 network — which now covers 18 percent of the European Union’s land area — are facing growing political pressure to scale back some of the protections the reserves now enjoy. Triggered by a group of member states, especially Great Britain and the Netherlands, the European Commission is carrying out an in-depth review of its nature conservation directives, which some top EU officials, as well as business and agricultural interests, say are outdated and stifle farming and business development.
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